1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a support structure of a touch panel.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the development mobile communication technologies, terminals such as a cellular phone, a PDA, and a navigation have extended their functions as more various and complicated multimedia providing means such as audio, video, wireless Internet web browser, and the like in addition to just display means of text information. Therefore, implementation of a larger display screen within the limited size of electronic information terminal has been required, and as a result, a display scheme adopting a touch panel has been further attracted public attention.
Meanwhile, in portable electronic apparatuses such as a cellular phone, a game machine, an e-book, and the like, a vibration function has been used for various purposes. In particular, a vibration generating device performing the vibration function is mounted on a mobile apparatus adopting the touch panel such as the cellular phone to be used as a sensing function of a reception signal to a transmission signal.
As the vibration generating device is applied to the touch panel, a demand for a haptic device allowing a user to immediately recognize feedback vibration to user's touch input has been increased.
In recent years, a demand of a consumer has been reflected, such that there has been a trend of gradually extending the size of the touch panel. However, when the vibration generating device is applied to a touch panel having a large plane size (e.g., a touch panel a screen size of 2.5 inch or more), the touch panel cannot perform entirely uniform translation movements and a vibration displacement amount varies partially according to the position.
FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a displacement amount for each position of the touch panel according to vibration generated from the inside of a touch panel support structure 10 in the prior art. The positional displacement amount measured along a longitudinal center line A-A′ on which the positional displacement width of the touch panel (see FIG. 1A) is measured as the largest value is shown in FIG. 1B. Further, a case in which the displacement amount according to the position is simulated is shown in FIG. 2. As shown in the figure, the displacement width is the largest at the center and both ends of the center line (FIG. 2A) and the displacement is substantially close to zero at a predetermined position between the center and both ends (FIG. 2, dead zone). In addition, as the plane size of the touch panel increases, a deviation of the displacement for each position further increases.